Gotta start somewhere

Well, this is it. My soon-to-be-husband and I are beginning our adventure into cider production. We have spent the last year trying many ciders from around the world (in the name of product research) and have a good idea of what we want to produce. We’ve been to cider producing regions of the UK, Spain, France, Germany and the US. It’s been extremely eye opening to realise most people aren’t drinking tannin-heavy ciders like those produced in Somerset and across the West Country. In fact most have been lightly sweet or sweet and acidic, both we much prefer to most West Country blends.

We have been lucky enough to be given free access to a 2-ish acre orchard down in Kent with predominantly Cox variety trees. There are a few Worcester apple trees mixed in, but most of the 120 or so trees are Cox. The orchard fell out of real production many years ago, but still it’s producing more than enough apples for us to get started. Hopefully we can begin improving the orchard’s health this winter with a good proper prune (me and my tree officer friends are going to be so happy to actually get to use tools and stuff). We paid a visit to the orchard last weekend to see how the apples were getting on. They are still a couple weeks away from begin ready, so in the interim we will get our equipment sorted and ready for production.